Heart to Hearts
by Omega Devin
Summary: "The ones who burn the brightest often burn out the fastest. It's the same throughout all time and space. Always has been." Post GITF, Rose/Doctor. My first Doctor Who fanfiction.


**Author's**** Note:** My first Doctor Who fanfiction. As a Rose/Doctor shipped, it seems appropriate that it's a story about The Talk between Girl in the Fireplace and Rise of the Cybermen.

He found her in the library, seated in front of the fire with a book open in her lap, lost in its pages. For several moments he just watched her, the way the firelight played off the soft gold highlights in her hair and the contours of her face, the way her brow furrowed slightly and she chewed her thumbnail as she concentrated on the words as though they were the only real things in the world.

He cleared his throat gently to get her attention without startling her.

"I haven't seen you for hours. I wanted to…to make sure you were all right."

"I'm fine. I figured you wanted to be alone for a while. I didn't want to disturb you."

"I thought I wanted to be alone until I remembered it's a miserable state to be in for too long." He offered her a light-hearted smile, which she only returned half-heartedly. The Doctor cleared his throat again as he walked over to her, sitting next to her on the hearth rug. "Where's Mr. Mickey, then?"

"In the game room. You should have seen the look on his face when he saw it. I wish I had a camera, it was pretty priceless."

"And you didn't take the opportunity to slay him at _Dance Dance Revolution_? I will win my high score back someday, by the way."

"I'd like to see you try," Rose retorted with her signature tongue-in-teeth smile, and the Doctor felt a thrill of hope at the chance that things really were okay between them. It was a short-lived hope, though, when Rose released a sigh. It was barely more than a whispered breath passing between her lips, but it was such a forlorn sound that the Doctor felt is hearts skip a beat each. "I wasn't much in the mood for bright lights and loud noises. I wanted to do some reading instead."

"Oh? And what's captured your fancy tonight?"

"It's nothing important, really…" Rose said hurriedly, but the Doctor already plucked the book from her hands, his long arm holding it well out of her reach. Rose huffed. "Really, Doctor, it's not like it's anything you don't already know."

"Still doesn't mean I can't be interested," the Doctor grinned cheekily as he looked up to read the book's title.

_A History of the French Monarchs and Notable Figures of the French Court._

He did not have to second-guess who she was reading about.

"Rose…" he began softly.

"She really was amazing, really, especially for her time," Rose said, perhaps a little too quickly. "I can see why you fancied her." She paused, gnawing her lip. "She was young. Too young."

"The ones who burn the brightest often burn out the fastest. It's the same throughout all time and space. Always has been."

"I'm sorry," she said, even softer still. "I'm sorry you couldn't give her the stars. She deserved them more than anyone."

"There are a lot of people who deserve the stars. It's just not always in their fate to obtain them."

Silence stretched out between them, broken only by the TARDIS's gentle background humming and the pop and crackle of the logs in the fire. Then the Doctor reached over to take Rose's warm hand in his much cooler one, running his thumb over her knuckles.

"I'm sorry, too. For everything that happened back there, I mean. For making light when you were strapped to that table. For the mirror. And for…for her."

Rose shook her head. "You shouldn't be sorry for her."

"I know, but I feel I should be. I should have asked to see if you were all right with her coming along."

"It's not my ship, Doctor. You can invite anyone you want aboard, you know that."

"Yes, but it would have been…different with her. Difficult, even. I should have taken your feelings into consideration."

Rose shrugged, trying…and failing…to act nonchalant. "'s not like I'm in a position to throw stones. First leaving Mickey…"

"Can't blame you there," the Doctor snorted, but Rose ignored his quip.

"And then with Adam."

Now it was the Doctor's turn to sober. "Hrm. Him. Well, you were quick enough to know he wasn't worth it. We were back to our own selves in no time in all, weren't we?"

"He wasn't worth it. But Reinette… She would be."

_Ah_. Now he knew. Now he understood what was making Rose so withdrawn, so… un-Rose.

"Rose… Please don't tell me you've been sitting here comparing yourself with Reinette. That you're been making yourself feel…" _Feel what? Unworthy? Inadequate? Anything that was so completely not Rose he couldn't even say the words aloud?_

"How could I not?" Rose said, even softer than ever now. They were words that should have been spoken in anger. He almost wished they would be rather than the soft resignation she was using. "Look at everything she was… Beautiful, educated, accomplished… The uncrowned queen of France… Kind of a far cry from a London shop girl with no A-levels, isn't it?"

The Doctor couldn't take it anymore. He shifted his position so he was kneeling in front of her, capturing Rose's face between his hands, his fingers entangling in her soft blonde locks. "You listen to me, Rose Tyler. I'll not have you sitting here believing these outrageous thoughts. Because _none of them are true_, do you hear me?"

"But…"

"No 'but's' in any way, shape or form. How about this? Have you thought about all the ways you're the same? Why she might intrigued me in the first place?"

Rose snorted. "Yeah, that's rich."

"I mean it! Think about how brave you both are, how resourceful! Rose, I have seen the bravest warriors in the universe throw down their weapons and flee even at the mere _mention_ of a Dalek ship, and you stared one right down its ugly eyestalk! When the Sycorax held a third of the Earth's population hostage you took it upon yourself to negotiate their surrender and retreat when no one else in the whole world could!"

"I think the word you're looking for is 'bluffing,'" Rose said drily, but the Doctor just kept talking.

"Then you have that idiot Adam, Mr. A-Levels, Extraterrestrial-Expert who fainted dead away at his first encounter at something he claimed he always wanted to see! You embraced everything we're seen and done with grace and poise that few people can even dream of possessing! People like you and Reinette are so, so rare, even in the whole history of the human race. People like that all deserve to see the stars for all they have to offer, but I can never hope take them all. But that does not mean I would abandon those I found for someone else. Do you know what would have happened if Reinette did come aboard?"

Rose shook her head, but the Doctor had a feeling that it was not because she did not know, but because she did not want to fully contemplate it.

"We would have taken her to some of the nicer worlds. Peaceful, beautiful worlds. Quiet worlds." He looked meaningfully into her eyes. "Worlds with no need for running. Of all the things Reinette was, Rose, a runner was not one of them."

Rose finally looked at him then, her eyes bright with tears. The Doctor felt his hearts clench, and he tilted her head forward to lean her forehead against his.

"You know what else she wasn't?"

Rose shook her head, the slightest movement side to side.

"She wasn't Rose Tyler. You know what I really saw in you, Rose, that night the Autons were stopped? When I asked you if you wanted to come with me? I saw in your eyes a young woman begging to be taken away from her mundane life, to be set free from her own mortal coil that she felt like she couldn't escape on her own. The ability to be great in your own right was always inside you. All I did was open the door.

"I told Adam I only took the best. I would never lie about that. Not about you. And I'm so, so sorry that I ever made you feel otherwise."

Just like that, the shadow of doubt in Rose's eyes lifted. Not completely, perhaps, but just enough to let the Doctor know they were going to be all right.

"You know what else?" he added after a moment.

"What?"

"I bet you Reinette couldn't have gotten Queen Victoria to say she was not amused, either."

That earned his greatest prize of all: a laugh, a pure, unfiltered laugh, and with it a genuine smile. The Doctor's face split into an equally wide grin, and he swept her into a bone-crushing hug, imprinting everything that made Rose _Rose_ into his memory; the scent of her hair, the way her body fit so perfectly against this incarnation, her heart beating a harmonious tempo with his own.

He knew, perhaps better than anyone else in the universe, that the brightest people always did burn out the fastest…but that did not mean that he could not bask in Rose Tyler's light as long as he was able. And he wasn't about to miss another minute of it, not for anything…or anyone…that all space and time had to offer.


End file.
